Backstroms on Tour: Assault on Cradle Mountain

Today had one clear objective, albeit one of several parts. The challenge was to get one newly-minted 14 year old to the (local) top of the world and to return him safely to camp. Along the way we would circumnavigate a lake, paddle in some others, scale some lesser heights, scramble some rocks, puzzle over a name, wonder at shovels high on a wall and head for home at top speed.

We allowed for the fact that today might take some time. We devised an elaborate scheme that would leave the car at our destination and take a shuttle bus to our start at Dove Lake, meaning we would not need to be back before the last bus of the day. It also meant we minimised the tracks we needed to duplicate from yesterday. Turned out to be a good move. It did depend though on driving into the park before the carparks were full, so it meant we were up and doing early, even allowing for sleep-ins for the birthday boy.

The day started at the Dove Lake carpark at the bright and early time of 10:15, after spending time attending to domestics and transport logistics. We are travelling with teenagers after all. From the carpark the day is pretty much laid out before you. A steady climb around the left hand side of the lake, first to a rock lookout and then to a saddle and into twisted lakes, before climbing Mt Hanson. From there you can clearly see the next challenge – a fall into the Rangers Hut valley before a climb of the rock cliff under Weindorfers Tower and across the face track towards the broad saddle under Cradle Mountain. A side trip up the peak before a crossing of the broad plateau back to home.

Doesn’t sound too bad when you say it like that. The reality was 11 hours from sign-in to sign out, but that isn’t so bad when you have 15 hours of sunshine. You see, teenagers are famous for taking their own sweet time, and summer has arrived with a vengeance down here. Combining those ingredients with a rocky climb in hot sun meant progress was slow and lunch under Cradle Mountain was not until 2pm.

By that time, unsurprisingly, the motivation was split on gender lines, and with only a little coaxing of the 10 year old, at 2:30 the boys set off on a two hour expected round trip to the summit. Well, not quite. You see, after 5 hours of walking, short legs and big rocks, combined with a healthy conservatism and perhaps a little lack of confidence, meant that the birthday boy was off, up in under an hour as expected, but it took us a little over two hours, and by then the peak traffic had slowed to a trickle, the shadows were lengthening (perhaps thankfully on the cooler side) and we had the summit to ourselves. Now that we knew we could do it, the trip down was much shorter.

My day’s plan had us sharing a birthday cake all of us together on the peak. Well, that just wasn’t going to happen, so at nearly 6pm it was cake time at the kitchen hut, complete with all of the trimmings. The one good thing about teenagers is they are still pretty easy to fool, so happy surprises all round.

The walk back over the plateau with lengthening shadows was just perfect. In stark contrast to the earlier efforts taking twice as long as the maps suggested, the trip home was completed in close to half the time. “Nose pointed homewards” is a genetic trait obviously. In case you wondered why nothing grows to any height up here, the track is stark white through here. The plants survive on almost no soil, apart from what they can gather in their roots and the rock is solid right underneath.